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How to Start a Content Strategy

Thanks to Anthony Verre

When writing for the World Wide Web, content developers have to remember to use Internet data to write for their readers. Quite simply, writing for the Internet isn’t the same discipline as writing for print; when writing for print, for example, you don’t have search engines to consider…so how does one start a content strategy?

A client came to us and asked us to look at their web content in terms of grammar, spelling, flow, SEO, etc. Like any project, we started with a discovery; if you don’t, you’re doing your clients/yourself a disservice.

The Discovery Sheet

The discovery helps you find out where your content is and what keywords you’re currently using. It helps you incorporate a strategy and campaign built around what you already have that’s working, and what you may need to change or add.

Even if you’re doing your own SEO and content, I strongly recommend filling out a discovery sheet. If nothing else, it helps you streamline your thoughts and better focus the creation of your content development and SEO strategies.

Write out what your issues are and what you’re trying to achieve with your strategy. Write down what social media sites you may be using, whether it’s YouTube, Twitter or other site. Mark your keywords and any place you already have content. Make sure you know which articles/blogs/pages are bringing the most traffic, and which traffic stays the longest (these are your interested visitors).

Before you even put pen to paper, you have to really know your audience. You have to know what they’re looking for, what their problems are and how your information can answer their needs. You need to answer questions before creating your content strategy, such as:

What are my goals?

What are my main keywords?

What would I consider a success metric?

It’s imperative to focus on marketing goals and metrics. Identify your key metrics, such as ranking, traffic, reputation and/or number of social mentions. Break these areas into your highest priorities. It’s important to bring all of your priorities into a comprehensive campaign, ultimately building a brand around the content.

Creating Your Strategy

A discovery can be used for any campaign, whether it’s for a content strategy, SEO campaign, marketing campaign, what have you. However, once the discovery is done, the actual campaign creation branches off to form the steps dependent on campaign type.

Step 1: Research

The first step in any campaign is research. Know your market; know your competitors. Learn what keywords your market is using to reach your competitors, and what keywords your competitors are using to reach your market.

Step 2: Define your goal sets

Why are you creating a content strategy? What is the purpose? A few reasons might be to:

Increase your authority

Increase your site visibility

Increase your traffic

Increase your ranking

Figure out what your main goal is, then create a set of complimentary goals. For example, if your goal is to increase authority, a secondary goal may be to post an article on four different highly visible industry sites. If you’re trying to increase your traffic, your goal might be to have an article pull in 100 visits.

Step 3: Choose your online avenues

“Online avenues” are a dime a dozen; your job isn’t to use them all, but to find the best ones for your purpose. Some online avenues might be:

Social media sites

Guest blogs

Your blog

Your website

Article sites

Industry sites

Industry blogs

eNewsletters

Industry eNewsletters

About.com industry site

Step 4: Lay out your campaign structure

The campaign structure answers questions like which keywords your content will focus on during the campaign. When you create your content strategy, you should set up how often you’ll be putting out content, where you’ll be putting it, a possible range of topics per online avenue and more.

What you’ll actually be doing is creating a web of information with your site at the center. You’re creating another website, if you will, but a site where each page is hosted by another site. The more focused your content strategy is, the stronger your final result will be.

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International SEO consultant is my title...but who cares about those? What I love is, writing about marketing, social, SEO, relevance, ruffling feathers and starting revolutions. What you read on this blog, will hopefully inspire you to continue the conversation. When I'm not multitasking around Level343 I sneak away and go sailing. I'm crazy about pistachios, and of course Nutella.

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Eldad Sotnick-Yogev
December 17, 2010 at 3:04 AM

What a super article!! I’m going to be pointing to this for clients and the few followers I have as this is spot on for a solid strategic approach to develop a content strategy to best take advantage of a company, its goals and what the internet offers.

Glad we met through the Dojo and will keep reading your great material.

Hey Eldad thanks for dropping by. Amazing at how many great people I have met through the Dojo. Looking forward to knowing more about you! Enjoy your holidays and stay warm wherever you are in the world!

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Great post, Gabriella. This is excellent advice. I very often see businesses just start posting on various social media sites without a goal or a plan. The results from a planned content strategy are almost always a far cry better. Thanks for the great insights.

I wanted to focus on writing strategies and not so much on SEO. We have plenty of posts about meta tags and their uses. Thanks for your input.

Kristina Bjoran
April 9, 2012 at 11:27 AM

I know I’m late to this party, but I just wanted to thank you for posting this. All too often in the content strategy world, the big names are just talking themselves in circles by saying, repeatedly, “content is important.” Or worse yet: “Content is king.”

Ugh.

It’s nice to see an actionable plan here, even if it’s a little vague (for obvious reasons). Thanks again!

The title of this article caught my attention. I do not speak English, I speak Spanish, however, with the Google translator … I could read and understand, its content is what I understand to speak with authority about it. There are words that do not end up saying anything, generic, is concrete, specific, knows how to communicate what he wants a “content strategy” is that sometimes we lose the north of our blog will help me focus on my goals and avoid rambling. …